Coordinating various semiotic registers: An important issue in learning science

Abstract

In this paper, we raise an issue, and support its importance within learning processes in science education : Students are confronted with a diversity of semiotic registers (daily language, mathematics, schemas, etc.) they are expected to coordinate. Such task may induce situations of misunderstanding, as we attempt to show here with a priori analyses of a few examples drawn from teaching manuals.
This idea is taken as the main hypothesis of a collaborative research, addressed to teachers through a half-baked teaching design focusing on modeling activities for high-school students in Switzerland. This paper only presents an illustrative extract of the results, due to the complexity of the examples and the usual limit in size. The presented analysis illustrates the relevance in ordinary teaching practices, of the issue raised in the a priori analyses, and calls on a more deliberate and explicit use of the coordination of semiotic registers in the construction of a didactic environment and learning science.